


Mission Complete(ish)

by Useless19



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Slash, battle buddies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 12:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12959445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Useless19/pseuds/Useless19
Summary: After a solo mission gone horribly right, Ryan’s saddled with a new partner. It’s not as bad as he feared it would be.





	Mission Complete(ish)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [futureboy (PokeRowan)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PokeRowan/gifts).



> For [futureboy](http://futureboy.tumblr.com), who wanted more Battle Buddies!AU. Happy birthday Rowan!
> 
> This is basically me throwing my Battle Buddies headcanon at the wall and seeing what sticks.

_I feel that you've made excellent progress, Agent Haywood. However, I don’t believe you're ready for solo work again. I’m clearing you for duty — provided you only take partnered missions._

 

* * *

 

Ryan sat down at his desk and slid the paperwork reinstating him to active duty into the folder containing his last failed mission report and the final piece of correspondence from his old partner. It wasn’t a folder he liked looking in often.

“Haywood.” Ryan looked up to see Jones walking purposefully towards his desk, trailing someone Ryan didn’t recognise. “You’ve got a free schedule, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ryan said. Jones should know, having put it together herself.

“Good.” Jones nodded. “This is our new field agent, Dooley. I want you to show him how we do things around here.”

The first impression Ryan had of Dooley was _shoulders_. Followed immediately by _blue hair?_ Not exactly regulation — though the Agency wasn’t very strict on how operatives looked, as long as they could get the job done.

Ryan bit back a sigh and stood up. Then looked down. The new agent had seemed taller while Ryan was still seated. Must’ve been the shoulders.

“Hi.” Dooley held out his hand, “I’m Jeremy.”

“Ryan.”

“I know,” Dooley said blithely, then froze and started backtracking, “not that I’ve been stalking you or —”

“Dooley here is a transfer from our surveillance team,” Jones said, smoothly cutting through Dooley’s babbling, “so he _should_ know standard protocol for fieldwork, but he doesn’t have any experience with the sim setup.”

Well, that would explain how Dooley knew who Ryan was.

“You want me to run him through a couple of simulations then?” Ryan asked, “Who’s his partner?”

“ _Actually_ ,” Jones said, in a tone Ryan feared, “we’re flooded with work right now and we need every team we’ve got out in the field. Congratulations, Haywood, here’s your ‘glad you’re back on duty’ mission.”

Jones slapped down a mission dossier on Ryan’s desk. It had ‘Haywood & Dooley’ freshly stamped on the cover.

Elation warred with worry. This newbie agent was Ryan’s new partner? What if things went south? What if Ryan caused this mission to fail like his last one? Dooley was also younger than Ryan by what looked like a fair bit. It didn’t make sense to be pairing the fresh new rookie up with someone who was starting to feel age creep up on him. _This wasn’t a good idea_.

“This isn’t a good idea,” Ryan said, “I need an experienced agent, just —”

“Hey!” Dooley looked affronted, “I’m experienced!”

“Field experience —” Ryan started.

“It’s gonna be fine,” Jones interrupted, before they could get into an argument, “Haywood, Dooley has our full trust and all the evaluations have put you both down as the best partners for each other. Now, do you want this mission, or do you want to do paperwork for another four months?”

“I'll take the mission,” Ryan replied, resigning himself to easy, rookie assignments or a dead partner. Neither was particularly appealing.

“ _We'll_ take the mission,” Dooley said firmly.

He met Ryan’s eye and didn’t look away. At least determination was something he had by the bucket-load. If he made it through this first mission then they might actually get somewhere.

 

* * *

 

_I hate to break up the connection, but man, I can’t keep working here. You’ll be alright without me, Ryan._

 

* * *

 

Ryan woke up with a start and flung himself up to sitting. He couldn’t get enough air. He scrabbled at his mask with shaking fingers, scratching his face when it turned out he wasn’t wearing a mask outside of his nightmare.

A tendril of something tickled his bare face and Ryan jerked back. A trailing, green vine was the culprit. His sluggish brain took a long moment to remember that he wasn’t in the Agency or at home in his own bed. He was on a mission in a jungle somewhere in South America.

 _They_ were on a mission.

Dooley wasn’t resigning. He _wasn’t_. It wasn’t like —

“Ryan?”

Ryan jumped as a hand came to rest on his shoulder. His knife was in his grasp and ready to stab, before he registered Dooley peering at him, concern written on his face — clear even in the gloom of the pre-dawn rainforest.

“You ok, buddy? Didya have a nightmare?”

Ryan dropped the knife and lunged, grabbing Dooley and holding him tight. Dooley made a noise of confusion, but Ryan didn’t care, Dooley was _here_. That’s all that mattered.

Dooley hugged back, rubbing a hand soothingly down Ryan’s back.

“I got you,” Dooley said into Ryan’s shoulder. “You wanna talk about it?”

The offer was tempting, but he couldn’t.

“No.”

“Well, if you ever do, I’m not going anywhere,” Dooley said.

“Thanks.” Ryan pulled back, letting the last of his dream worries go. He had to be ready to focus on the mission. It was only their second after being paired up and they were still getting used to each other.

Dooley squinted at the sky. The patches that could be made out through the dense foliage were a deep orange. Seconds later the alarm Ryan had set went off, buzzing loudly enough to wake them, but (hopefully) quietly enough to avoid drawing attention from enemy scouts.

“Right on time,” Dooley said cheerfully. “Man, I wish my nightmares were that considerate.”

Ryan laughed. “I’m sure they will be, eventually.”

“Ok, it’s just creepy when you say it like that.”

Finding the enemy facility wasn’t the hard part. Sneaking in without setting off the alarm was much trickier. Thankfully their mission briefing hadn’t specified no bloodshed, or anything equally stupid.

“Next time I’m asking for an assignment to a modelling agency or a catwalk show,” Jeremy huffed, dropping the body he was carrying into the storage crate Ryan held open.

“Yeah?”

“Everyone’s really skinny,” Jeremy said, rearranging the body’s legs so they fitted in properly and the lid could close fully.

“And here I thought you were just wanting to feel up someone pretty.” Ryan handed Jeremy back his rifle. “Y’know they like models to be tall.”

“I’m sure I could be a bodyguard or something.”

“They like their bodyguards to be taller,” Ryan said, “You’d probably get sick of all the bitching real quick too. I know I —” he cut himself off.

“You know you what?” Jeremy asked, suddenly laser-focused.

“Nothing.”

“No way,” Jeremy laughed, “no fucking way. The Milan mission — that was _you?_ ”

“You can’t prove anything,” Ryan said weakly, “All the pictures were confiscated.”

That wasn’t _entirely_ true, but Jeremy didn’t need to know that.

“No, no, no. You don’t understand — Matt was surveillance on that one. He totally had us all thinking it was Turney in the field,” Jeremy said. “Bastard,” he added, fondly.

“And getting to see an attractive, young lady in her underwear is much more appealing than seeing, well, _me_ half naked,” Ryan finished.

“I wouldn’t have minded,” Jeremy said. Then he froze, like he hadn’t meant to actually let the words out of his mouth.

Voices from the corridor outside the room they were holed up in saved Ryan from having to find something to say to that. Jeremy looked unbelievably grateful as he got into position on the other side of the doorframe across from Ryan — the last time Ryan had seen him like that was when Ryan had let him have the last slice of pizza they’d shared in celebration of their first mission going well.

The next part of the mission was simple enough, they only took a few scrapes on their way to the central information centre. Ryan pulled the intel from the main computer hub with only one minor security breach, and made sure they both had a copy. From there it was just a matter of finding the right vantage point to take out their primary target.

“I _am_ glad you’re my partner. I don’t think I’ve said it before,” Ryan said, after a twenty minute wait. He felt he owed it to Jeremy after being so initially dismissive.

Jeremy’s face lit up in a huge grin. “I’m glad you’re my partner too, buddy. Let’s see how long we can keep this team going.”

Ryan couldn’t keep the smile off his face, even as their target wandered into view.

“I’ve got visual,” Jeremy said, professional in the moment, as ever, “taking the shot.”

The crack of a sniper rifle. The jerk of the target as they were hit. Alarms blaring. Running through the jungle to the extraction point with his teammate.

That was what it was to truly be alive.

 

* * *

 

_You and I make a great team, pal. From here on out it's Battle Buddies all the way._

 

* * *

 

Six months and a dozen successful (if highly destructive) missions later, found Ryan and Jeremy hiding in the rafters of a warehouse where a big arms deal was going to go down. Jeremy was keeping watch, while Ryan set up his gear and lowered a microphone amidst several cranes that were also hanging off the rafters.

“Can you hear me, Ryan?” Jeremy whispered from the next beam over.

Ryan gave him a thumbs up as the recording equipment picked up his words and played them loud and clear through Ryan’s headphones. They were in position.

As ever, it was ‘hurry up and wait’ on missions like these. The deal was to go down in an hour. In the meantime they had to be still, alert, and above all patient.

It _sucked_. It definitely wasn't why Ryan had gotten into this business.

Ryan’s arms had fallen asleep twice, and Jeremy had shifted position more times than he could count, before the dealers finally showed. _Then_ the dealers spent the next fifteen minutes exchanging pleasantries. Ryan just wanted to shoot them all and be done with it, but that wasn’t the mission briefing.

“Hey! Up there!”

The shout startled everyone and made Ryan flinch as his equipment amplified it. A gunshot deafened him. He tore the headphones off, casting about frantically for the source of gunfire.

 _There_.

Ryan spotted the grunt just as he was taken out by a shot from Jeremy. Below, the dealers and their henchmen were looking for cover and starting to take pot-shots up at Jeremy’s hiding place, as well as at each other — they both must’ve assumed the ambush was set up by the other side.

“So much for stealth,” Ryan muttered to himself. He abandoned the recording equipment and pulled out a grenade.

The explosion was cathartic after all that waiting. In the resulting confusion, Ryan managed to creep over to Jeremy’s position, mostly undetected.

“What do we do?” Jeremy shouted, barely audible over the continued fire from below and the ringing in Ryan’s ears.

“We need that information,” Ryan shouted back, “So we get the dealers alive and _ask_ them for it.”

Jeremy unapologetically clutched at Ryan as they made their way across the beams and to the ladder they’d used to get up, avoiding gunfire all the while. How someone terrified of heights had made it through the Agency’s screening process, Ryan would never know.

Ryan climbed down the ladder first. A bullet skimmed his side halfway down. He took his feet off the rungs and slid the rest of the way as fast as he could.

It looked like most of the grunts had been killed by one side or the other — or by Jeremy and his sniper rifle — and one of the dealers had managed to retreat, taking most of their more skilled guards with them and leaving a few to mop up the rest. Just one dealer and a couple of their personal guard left on the other side. Not ideal, but maybe they could still salvage something from this mess.

Later, Ryan couldn’t say if it was a cry of pain from Jeremy, the crack of a gunshot, or the flash of muzzle flare that alerted him. By rights he was still partly deaf and hadn’t had eyes on the shooter. Yet, _something_ made him turn back just in time to see Jeremy fall the last seven feet of the ladder.

“Jeremy!”

He wasn’t moving. Ryan rushed over, heedless of the firefight behind him. There was a lot of blood. _It was gonna be a bitch to clean off the tac vest_ , Ryan thought hysterically.

“Jeremy! You can’t leave me. We’re a team — we’re the Battle Buddies. I can’t… I can’t be left alone like after… I can’t…”

Jeremy’s eyelids fluttered as Ryan’s fingers found his pulse. He was breathing. It was shallow, but he was _breathing_.

Ryan felt relief wash over him. Jeremy was still here.

The contents of Ryan’s medkit spilled messily over the ground as he dug through frantically for the field dressing. Once he’d found it, he silently thanked the Agency’s training protocols, forcing him to practise over and over until he could wrap a wound in his sleep.

Soon Jeremy was as stable as Ryan could make him. _It was going to be ok_ , Ryan told himself.

And somebody was going to _pay_ for this.

It was so easy to slip back into the Vagabond persona. Too easy to feel like he was wearing the mask again. Ryan didn’t know how he took out the stragglers without going down himself, but he did it. They all fell, one after another.

There was only one left alive now. Bloody footprints were smeared seconds after Ryan’s boots laid them down by the squirming body he dragged.

“I'm going to hurt you,” Ryan said, dropping the body not too far from Jeremy, “how much I'm going to hurt you… well that's up to you.”

The remaining dealer stared up are Ryan with frantic eyes. He was shouting something, but the gag muffled it all.

“This was meant to be a covert mission,” Ryan mused out loud, running his fingers over his improvised tools. “Stealthy. Silent. We were meant to sneak in, record everything you said, then escape with no one the wiser.”

The dealer was now trying to wriggle away, but couldn’t gain ground fast enough with his arms tied behind his back.

“But you,” Ryan paused, fixing the dealer with an ugly glower, “you got my Battle Buddy shot. I recognise your voice. You didn’t have to shout and draw attention to our position. You could’ve let us do our job and this wouldn’t have happened.”

Behind him, Jeremy was still breathing shallowly. Stable, for now, though hovering on the edge of consciousness — for the best, considering the pain he was likely in and what Ryan was about to do.

“I used to have a proper set of tools for this,” Ryan said, picking up a scalpel that he had found in his medkit, “I suppose we'll just have to make do.

“Now, tell me what I want to know.”

The Vagabond moved forward and the screams began.

 

* * *

 

_That's enough, Agent Haywood! You're on probation. Indefinitely. In the meantime, I suggest you start looking for another partner — if anyone will take you._

 

* * *

 

Ryan was half-asleep when the sound of rustling bedsheet brought him sharply awake. Jeremy was twitching, a hand rising partly up, only to drop down onto the hospital blankets again. Ryan had seen that before, the nurses had assured him it was normal.

This time Jeremy’s eyes blinked open hazily. Ryan hadn’t seen _that_ yet.

“Jeremy!”

Jeremy gave a groan and shook his head slowly. He reached up and pulled at the tube running into his nose.

“Leave it.” Ryan caught Jeremy’s hand and held as tight as he dared with the drip attached to the back of it. “Are you with me, buddy?”

“Thin’ so?” Jeremy slurred, squinting at Ryan, “Thirs’y.”

It took another twenty minutes of letting the nurses run tests and help Jeremy with a few matters of private business, before he was capable of coherent conversation. He looked pale and drawn, but _so_ much better than when he was bleeding out in the warehouse.

“They gave me a bald patch.” Was the first thing Jeremy said to Ryan once he was allowed back in the room.

“They had to give you stitches,” Ryan said, “it’ll grow back.”

“I’m _not_ having a bald spot.”

“What’re you gonna do? Shave it all — oh god you are.”

Jeremy grinned. Ryan tried to smile back, but couldn’t.

“What do you remember?” Ryan asked, gripping the bed rail so he didn’t fidget too much. Best to get this over with.

Jeremy went very still. “More than I should. Probably more than you want me to.”

Oh.

Fuck.

Ryan had been hoping he’d at least been spared that.

“The Director will understand if you need extra time off,” Ryan found himself saying, “you'll be able to get a new partner without any trouble. Collins, maybe. Or the new guy, Diaz.”

“What? Ryan —”

“You've been a better teammate than I could ever have hoped to have,” Ryan continued, talking over Jeremy, “But, could you not —”

“Dammit, Ryan, shut up for a second!”

Ryan looked at Jeremy. Pale and strange as he was, with all the tubes running into him, Jeremy's face held only frustration and… was that concern?

Ryan didn't understand. Where was the fear and disgust?

“I'm not going to request another partner, that would be a shitty thing to do,” Jeremy said flatly. “You're my Battle Buddy.”

“But I…” there wasn't any good way to describe what Ryan had done.

“You went through a nightmare,” Jeremy said. He reached over to grab Ryan's hand from where he was still gripping the bed rails. “Are you alright, pal?”

Ryan started. “Me? I'm not the one who got shot and fell off a ladder.”

Jeremy shrugged. “I got shot, sure. I'm sore, I'm gonna bitch all through the desk duty we're gonna be stuck on, but I'll heal fine. This isn't the worst way I've had a bullet in me.” He gripped Ryan's hand tighter. “But I have a feeling it was harder for you.”

“I'm not the one who got shot,” Ryan repeated numbly.

“I know, but… are you ok?”

Had anyone ever asked that before? How was it that no one had asked that before?

“After my previous partner left the Agency, before you were assigned to me,” Ryan said haltingly, “I did a long undercover solo mission.”

“Yeah, we heard about that in surveillance,” Jeremy said, “but no one seemed to know what it was for. Gavin kicked up a bit of a fuss over it being hushed up.”

“I joined a gang. I started just as an enforcer, but they quickly discovered I was menacing enough and knew enough about anatomy to be a good torturer.”

Ryan risked a glance at Jeremy, but still no fear or disgust.

“I liked it,” Ryan admitted, “I was good at it and I liked it. The Agency disapproved once I got back and debriefed. That's why they don't want me working alone and have me seeing the psychiatrist regularly.”

“That's a hell of a thing to have to keep to yourself,” Jeremy said, “thanks for trusting me.”

“Agency's orders,” Ryan said, “they didn't want me scaring off new recruits.”

“Good thing I don’t scare off easy then.”

Jeremy’s smile was beautiful. Ryan was in way too fucking deep and he didn’t care.

A nurse came by with a tray of food for Jeremy. He pulled a face, but dutifully started eating.

“By the way, they’re putting us on simulation work for a bit,” Ryan said. It was good to be back on lighter topics of conversation. “Something about our work being too ‘messy’ for outside agencies looking for hires.”

“Shit.”

Ryan laughed. “It’s not so bad. And I bet we’re good enough to get the prize for first place.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” A fire lit in Jeremy’s eyes. “There’s rankings?”

“Didn’t you cover this in surveillance?”

“We never got to see what was in the sims. We didn’t need to know, so why would they bother telling us?” Jeremy said with a shrug, “We had different training.”

“So you have no idea what you’re getting into?” Ryan felt a smile spread on his face. “This is going to be _fun_.”

“You’re gonna tell me what to expect, right? Ryan? _Ryan!_ ”

 

* * *

 

_Battle Buddies, this is Mission Control, we have a new assignment for you…_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Not one for posting on my tumblr, but it's [ireythegnome](http://ireythegnome.tumblr.com) if you want to message me or chat.


End file.
